What should my Spirit be at?

I'm main spec Elemental, but I would like to learn to heal on the Shaman, since I've main healed since Wrath on a Paladin. Either way, I switched spec's and I had some non Spirit gear, but most of it had Spirit. Anyways at around 478 in my Resto set, I had like 5k Spirit then like 6.5k or more with flask and food. Is that low? I seemed to run out of mana fast, or it could be just my healing. Either way, I know on my Pally I almost had 12k mana at like 485 which isn't that much higher up.

For Resto (at least for 25 H), I would recommend as much Spirit as you can get. I run at around 15,500 raid buffed Spirit and still feel regen capped would be useful on long fights like H Shek'zeer and H Sha and very healing intensive fights like H Protectors. Plus, Spirit scales up the regen returns from Mana Tide Totem, buffing the regen of your entire raid.

I would aim for Spirit on every piece of gear that you can get it on, using Spirit gems in items not shared with your DPS set, and using Spirit food and flask. Anything less than 10k unbuffed Spirit is going to be very rough for hard mode healing of any kind.

Will my shaman is Ilvl 489 and I run at 10833 spirit unbuffed atm. My guild got a late start to raiding(long story) but we should kill empress this week on reg and take care of terrace hopefully in about two weeks. I feel good about that and we have a really sub-optimal raiding group as well, for example no intervates, VE etc. I would try to bump that up to at least 9k unbuffed and then see how you feel.

It depends mainly on your healing style, you want enough spirit so you don't go oom on progress fights, if you are ending fights with a lot of mana left you have too much and could reforge a bit out of it.

If its just for normal's then aim for about 8k-12k Spirit... Depending on your trinkets of course. Just think about that your trinket/weapon enchant won't increases the mana tide effectiveness. If you can reach 8-12k spirit without trinkets then you can aim for an Int trinket with spirit proc. Like Relic of Chi-Ji or the Sun radiance from Tsulong.

Originally Posted by tidus93

It depends mainly on your healing style, you want enough spirit so you don't go oom on progress fights, if you are ending fights with a lot of mana left you have too much and could reforge a bit out of it.

While this is nice and all, it doesn't give you much info. Since its subjective. Also a lot of fights that are mana draining have some sort of regen mechanic, like Orbs on Sha or Totem phase in spiritbinders fight etc.

Enough spirit is to vague... I have read it like everywhere here, but it doesn't help you.

i'd also love to know this, i hit 90 on my shaman yesterday, (it was my main alt during DS / did heroic dw...not that it felt like an achievement by the time i did)
always had fun healing, i've heard anywhere from 5-9k being thrown around as a min for reg mode msv...the 9k's might of been post flask / food maybe...

i'd love to know what i should aim for on Glendrider-Darkspear(US)
my main atm is Hakujaden, same server, so i know all the reg mode fights.
would love to know where i should be with a competent healing group (also alts / undergeared by standards atm-)
but everyone in raid has knowledge of the fights...so might ease up on needing as much mana -if people are avoiding stuff because fights are known-

would love to know where i should be with a competent healing group (also alts / undergeared by standards atm-)
but everyone in raid has knowledge of the fights...so might ease up on needing as much mana -if people are avoiding stuff because fights are known-

Generally, I'd say: See to it that you have spirit on every piece of gear. Gem for pure spirit in blue, spi/x gems in other colours.

"Aiming" for a certain amount of spirit isn't really possible, you see. You're limited by the item level of the gear that you have or have access to.

I'm personally quite fond of crit-combinations in gems and a crit-reforge.

Not sure what my raid buffed spirit is, but between 8500 and 9500 I guess, but I found that if you spec for crit, you never have to worry about mana. Might just be the content we do (6/6 normal and 2/6 normal), but I cant recall a single time I ran out of mana since then

Just to echo everyone else, >9k spirit, 50% unbuffed mastery and reforge the rest to crit. This combo will see you through normal modes easily.

In my own personal experiance, i have found out that if you are the 3rd healer or raid healer that a mastery or haste build works better then if you are tank healing. So for tank healing i would do like you said. but as Raid healer you want to go either Mastery or Haste.

I raid 10 mans(heroic) and generally run around 7.5-8k spirit with double proccing spirit trinkets. Before I had both those trinkets I ran around 10-11k spirit.
If you stack crit, you'll get a lot of mana back with crits & also using the recall totem glyph(if you remember to use it, you get a ton of mana back here as well).

For normals you should be able to get away with lower spirit. Between glyphs and crit mana returns, high spirit isn't exactly necessary for resto shamans, especially on normal modes. Of course, if you're new to healing you may want to play it safe and go with more spirit than I tend to roll with.

Now I know some guides say Glyph of Riptide is "mandatory/required" but honestly? I don't like it all that much. It's kind of a mana drain and does just about the same amount of healing as if you didn't have the glyph. Plus you lose out on the initial heal, which can be just as big as a healing wave depending on how much mastery you've got and how low on HP the target is. Also, many argue it's to "make sure tidal waves is up at all times" but if you're using the tidal waves buff correctly, by the time you heal 2 people with tidal waves, riptide is almost off CD anyway. If you end up "blanketing" the raid with riptides, you'll go oom really quick and lose out on your yummy tidal wave buff(s). I avoid this glyph like the plague, to be honest.

I generally roll with mana regen glyphs such as telluric currents, totem of recall & I'll toggle between water shield/elemental totem/healing wave glyphs for that 3rd glyph slot. Even on heroics, many fights allow me to sit there and cast LB for mana return, I rarely(if ever) swap the telluric currents glyph out and I NEVER swap out my recall totem glyph. We 2 heal most fights with 2 resto shamans(when we 3 heal it's a priest healer).

Also, totemic restoration(4th tier on talent tree) is my talent of choice for this tier. Guides tend to lean to call of the elements, but I think it's crap. I get much more use out of TR than I would get out of CoE. With the recall glyph, this talent is very strong, especially with healing stream totem(which is usually in my top 3 heals most fights).

How much spirit you run with highly depends on what glyphs you're choosing and what play style you prefer. I like thinking outside the box a little bit, over going "cookie cutter." When I strayed away from high/stacking spirit, it took me a bit to train myself to monitor my totem durations better(for optimal use of recall glyph) but it's just like anything else really.

I know that was a lot lol, but a lot of those things will help you in conserving mana without having to stack spirit as much. Hope it helps! Good luck!